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AMETI: ignoring the real problem?

By Joshua Arbury, on May 20th, 2010

The Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative, generally known as “AMETI“, came out as something of a replacement of the failed “Eastern Motorway” idea. It’s a fairly complex series of projects designed to ease congestion and improve transport for a number of different modes in the Panmure/Mt Wellington/Pakuranga part of Auckland. As shown in the map below, there are a large number of projects which make up AMETI, and the timeline for completing them spreads over the next 20 or so years:

There has been a lot of talk about AMETI over the past few years, but really nothing much has happened at all in advancing this project. Well, at least until now. It seems as though the first section of AMETI, some upgrades around Panmure, is kicking into action – at least in its design stage. This seems to be the plan for Panmure:

Phase One: 2012-2014

Design for this phase will take place 2010-2012.

In Phase One of Panmure, a new street link will be created from Mt Wellington Highway to Fraser Road. This new street will remove around 25,000 vehicles (that are wanting to simply pass through) from the Panmure Roundabout each day.

The new road will extend along from William Harvey Place (where Big Save Furniture is currently), beside the railway line, under the Ellerslie Panmure Highway, and join back into a local road at Fraser Road.

In the short term, the new road will link through to William Harvey Place, however, in the longer-term, this will take a different route, passing near to Van Damme’s Lagoon and on towards Waipuna Road.

This new street development is an interim measure and comprises one lane in each direction. Capacity has been built into this project to widen this to two lanes in each direction at a later stage.

Phase Two: 2014-2016

Design for this phase will take place 2010-2014.

Once the new connection road between Mt Wellington Highway and Fraser Road is complete, taking traffic off the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Lagoon Drive, it will allow Rapid Transit Network (RTN) related capacity improvements to be made in the area. The Panmure RTN components form part of a region-wide high quality PT network connecting through to Pakuranga, Botany and eventually Manukau.

On Lagoon Drive, one dedicated RTN bus and one traffic lane in either direction will be introduced (there are currently two general traffic lanes in either direction). Because traffic and buses will continue to travel across the Panmure Bridge, it is also expected that the “tidal flow” of traffic together with bus priority across the Panmure Bridge will be retained.

On the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway, there will be one RTN dedicated bus lane connecting to a bus-rail RTN interchange above Panmure station, and two general traffic lanes in each direction (there are currently three general traffic lanes in each direction).

The Panmure Bridge will have an extended structure. It is anticipated that between 2012 and 2015 a new cycle and pedestrian structure will be designed and built adjacent to the south side of the Panmure Bridge. On the Manukau side of the bridge, the new cycle/pedestrian bridge will be designed to tie in with the cycleway and footpath adjacent to the Tamaki River (the Rotary Walkway), as well as the existing footpath down the Pakuranga Highway. It will also link into improved cycle facilities that are planned in the area. On the Auckland city side of the Panmure Bridge, the new structure will be designed to tie in with the existing footpath flowing onto Lagoon Drive, as well as the cycleway and facilities around the Panmure lagoon.

In the medium to long term, a bus and cycle route is proposed on Ti Rakau Drive. It is anticipated that the cycle/pedestrian bridge will become an important link for this future cycle route.

The Panmure Roundabout will be reconfigured to take into account the new road from the Mt Wellington Highway towards Glen Innes, and the new configurations of Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Lagoon Drive. The design of the roundabout is not yet confirmed. Consultation will occur over the best solution closer to construction and once traffic flows are known. RTN bus priority through the reconfigured roundabout will be introduced.

There are a bunch of interesting artist impressions about what we might expect to see:

While I imagine there are certainly some advantages in eliminating (or altering) some of the nastier bottlenecks in this area, such as the Panmure roundabout, what I see in the pictures above just seems like a giant roadsfest, except for one image of an upgraded Panmure train station. The roads are generally proposed as high-speed multi-lane semi-highways, coming across as particularly unfriendly to pedestrians – not exactly what you would hope to see around Panmure, which is potentially a pretty major urban intensification node. Not really a place to be slamming through high-speed arterials I would have thought.

Sure, AMETI as a whole doesn’t ignore public transport completely – as we will see a number of new bus lanes and hopefully in the longer term something resembling a “Rapid Transit Network” (RTN) line linking through to southeast Auckland – although I would like to take this opportunity to remind the involved parties that basic bus lanes do not constitute an RTN. An RTN is either a railway line or a “Northern Busway” quality busway.

And ultimately, I think that’s my biggest problem with AMETI. It proposes spending a pretty massive amount of money ($1.3 billion I think) on upgrades to transport in this part of Auckland, but avoids/ignores the biggest cause of the problems faced by that area of the city at the moment – the complete and utter lack of anything resembling rapid transit to the east of Tamaki River. While certainly some aspects of AMETI make sense, completely avoiding/ignoring the main issue – how to provide that RTN from Panmure through to Pakuranga and beyond – is utterly stupid. It’s an excellent example of the good old saying “avoiding the elephant in the room”. What Auckland desperately needs is an RTN out to the southeast part of the city, and what we ideally need is for that RTN to be rail – so that it can link into the existing Eastern railway line and we don’t end up in the silly situation of either having to build a busway next to the existing railway line between Panmure and the CBD, or forcing thousands of bus commuters from the southeast to transfer onto a (probably already crowded) train at Panmure to make the last leg of their journey into the city. There really is no feasible alternative to the idea of a Howick/Botany railway line. The sooner we realise that, and get on with planning for this critical project, the sooner we’ll stop ignoring the elephant in the room and stop wasting money on road upgrades that will only tinker around the edges and not solve the real problem.

I guess with a ‘real’ motorway off the table the next best thing for these planners is a de facto motorway built by boulevarding the route with wide 2+ lane roads in each direction. That intersection in Panmure looks like it will have 5 (!) lanes in the Eastern direction plus 3 in the Western – that’s a pretty huge intersection in the middle of a town centre. That’s almost doubling the existing 5 lanes……

Politics. AMETI was/is controlled by the current Cit-Rats who have little understanding of PT or transport dynamics… so what we get is something akin to Lenningrad by the sea circa 1962. Just like Cit-Rats don’t understand planning so we get the current dogs breakfast compelete with mould that we see around town.

Instead of ‘Transport Initiative’ I wish they would just call it a Roads Plan. There is no but road based transport included and very little initiative! It is a highway plan that includes a few bus lanes and the odd cycle lane. That doesn’t deserve the progresssive sounding title of a ‘transport initiative’.

The flyover at Pakauranga is straight out of the Eastern Motorway, while the rest simply substititutes new multi lane arterials instead of grade separated multi lane arterials.

My understanding was that AMETI emerged as an alternative to the Eastern Highway, but most of the planning continued well past Hubbarb’s time into the present so would be highly influence by the cit rats. Considering NZTA is funding this, do you really think it would include anything more than roads?

Rule No 1 when unveiling a new road. Get an artist to draw an idyllic scene which includes flash modern buildings, trees, a reasonable number of pedestrians out enjoying themselves by taking advantage of the new road layout, but above all minimise the number of cars shown in any impression.

The Reeves Road flyover (yellow and purple sections in the above plan) IS a motorway except in designation. No if’s and buts about it. It grade separates Ti Rakau Road and Pakuranga Highway with something like a six-lane overbridge of Pakuranga Highway-Reeves Road over Ti Rakau Road. Roads mania at its worst.

The local roads are fine for movements of people within the community. They were designed as such anyway.
Now when we get others coming in using as a short cut then they should not ask for more than what they have already caused, hardship to the locals during the time of their crossing, And even more by wanting a makeover for their sake.
Designers should look into ways for discouraging usage rather than increased usage.They should take the motorway already built for them in their route from the city.
It is hope that planners look into the socio and environmental aspect of any projects and not carried away by those who want to make money or political gains out of doing the project. We are not moving away from quality of life , I hope. Residents here are happy with their quality of life to be taken away by the Ameti.

took a look at the Ameti link road ( North) on the website this afternoon, confused for a bit as they hve labelled Morrin Rd as Tainui Road, hopefully our traffic planners don”t read their own maps!!!!